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Sunday, December 2, 2012

Beer Christmas Gifts 2012: Support Local Edition

This year with all the talk of "fiscal cliffs", death of the Twinky and employees striking because they work at Wally World and only make like $2 an hour I wanted to make this years Beer Christmas Gifts post easy and locally focused.

Shopping local is extremely important. A larger share of a locally owned businesses revenue goes back to the community. And most local businesses are small businesses which are owned by someone who lives locally not some fat cat CEO in New York City making billions who doesn't actually do work.

This post will focus only on the local Louisiana beer industry but even if you're not lucky enough to live here you can still support your own towns beer industry.

Here is my list of great local Christmas buys for your beer geek:

1) Local beer gift basket- A couple stores in town will put together a gift basket for you. Martin Wine Cellar is BIG on the gift baskets this time of year. Go to the store and pick out some local beers and have the store gift wrap them for you. It's a great gift!

2) Buy schwag from your favorite local brewery- Most breweries have a website or store where you can buy t-shirts, hats and other awesome stuff. I know that NOLA Brewing has both.

3) A gift certificate to your beer geeks favorite beer store- This one is easy. I would recommend about $25 or more. This price will allow them to put together a nice array of brews.

4) Buy a bar tab- Not sure how easy this one is but I'm sure a local bar can pull this off. Supporting your local beer bar is a great way to shop and support local.

5) Buy a homebrew kit- Most towns have a local homebrew store. Ours is Brewstock. A homebrew kit is the next step for your beer geek. I promise you it is.

6) Support your favorite beer blogger- Us beer bloggers don't get paid to do this. We do it for the love of beer. And probably the hope we can actually turn this into a full time gig. Some of us even sell t-shirts online. Shameless I know.